


Stitched With Its Color

by lammermoorian



Category: Star Wars (Marvel Comics), Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: Force Weirdness, Gen, and a baby Jacen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-17
Updated: 2019-03-17
Packaged: 2019-11-21 07:05:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,460
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18138986
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lammermoorian/pseuds/lammermoorian
Summary: Your absence has gone through me / Like thread through a needle. / Everything I do is stitched with its color. - W. S. MerwinLuke's been all over the galaxy searching for clues about the Jedi - he should have started a little closer to home. (The Meeting of Hera and Luke that Marvel Comics are too cowardly to authorize.)





	Stitched With Its Color

 

“Excuse me? Commander?”

Luke looks up from his cold, half-eaten meal, spork stilling in its scraping journey across the plate, and blinks up at the pilot in front of him for just a little bit too long, before a name suddenly materializes in his head. “Hobbie! Hi.”

“Hello,” Hobbie says back, just a little bit starry-eyed.

Seconds pass. No one moves. Luke is acutely aware of the lingering texture of ration bars against his teeth, and he tries to swallow it away.

“Did you need something?” Luke says, coming out maybe a little brusquer than he’d like - Hobbie is a good guy, a good pilot, but a known gossip, and he still won’t let up on that hero worship, no matter how many times Luke has firmly asked him to stop.

“Ah, just - “ His eyes flick to the side, and he leans in, fingers tightening around his plasteel food tray. “I heard you were looking for some information about the Jedi?” He speaks softly, just barely heard over the dull roar of the commissary.

Now that piques Luke’s interest. He certainly hasn’t been making the rounds of the Rebel Fleet outright, asking everyone and anyone in his path if they knew anything at all about the Jedi, but he hasn’t necessarily been hiding it either. And besides, given all that has happened in the last couple of months, he’s had to put the search for his answers on hold while they dealt with the latest and greatest threat of total annihilation at the hands of the Empire.

“I am,” says Luke. Somehow, despite the lowest of low expectations, it has been even harder to find any information from anybody that isn’t propaganda, myth, or outright lies. (That is, assuming they weren’t too terrified to speak of them in the first place.) Not that he blames them - on many worlds, even mentioning the Jedi can be grounds for immediate arrest.

Hobbie nods, face carefully blank. “Well,” he drawls, in that familiar preamble to whatever gossip is making the rounds today, “did you know, then? About General Syndulla?”

General Syndulla? “About what?” Quickly, Luke makes a mental list of everything he does know about General Hera Syndulla: Phoenix Leader, ace pilot, and early pillar of the Rebel Alliance; General Syndulla is, among her many other duties, in charge of training all new recruits. Somehow, Luke has been spared her training gauntlet - nailing the Death Star exhaust port probably makes him somewhat exempt - but from what he’s heard, it is extraordinarily brutal. He’s seen her in action in drills, nigh uncatchable but packing one hell of a punch, and heard exploits of some of the unbelievable tricks she’s pulled in the past in her own personal ship, a pretty diamond freighter named the _Ghost_ \- tricks that were maybe only possible with the Force. “Is she - ?”

“No,” Hobbie says, “she’s not - you know. She’s not a Jedi. But,” clearing his throat, he throws one last look over his shoulder, one last assurance that no one is listening, before saying, “but a couple of her crew members - her crew actually pulled me out of Skystrike, did you know? She sent in this girl - Satine? No, Sabine! Mandalorian, so you already know she’s crazy - and this other guy, I can’t remember his name, but!” And here he leans in, Luke following suit, because despite everything, despite all the dead ends and the half-truths and the outright lies, he’ll still seek out and eat up every bit of information about the Jedi that he can. Just in case. “But I do remember, when we got back to Chopper Base, I saw it - they both had lightsabers.”

“Both?” Luke breathes. Both! Two Jedi! This is - this is too good, Luke had barely hoped for even a scrap of information, but to find out that General Syndulla had two Jedi on her crew? And they’ve been fighting with the Rebellion for years! Just imagine what they could teach him. Maybe they knew Ben Kenobi. Maybe they even knew his father! “Who are they?”

Hobbie deflates, the secret smile disappearing from around his mouth. “Were,” he corrects, quietly. “They were both lost in the Liberation of Lothal, I think.”

Luke slumps. “Oh.” He looks down at his tray again, at the grey, congealed lumps of mystery meat and starch, his stomach sinking even lower.

“Still,” says Hobbie, after a second, with forceful cheer, “if you’re looking to learn about the Jedi, I’d start with her.”

Looking to follow another hopeless path to an inevitable dead end? Pass. “Thanks, Hobbie,” he mumbles.

Although… General Syndulla _is_ here, on base, a part of the army - she’s available to him. Luke wouldn’t have to go traipsing about any more seedy cantinas to find her, or go and get himself mixed up with any more bounty hunters, insane monarchs, amoral archaeologists. At the very least, she probably wouldn’t pull a blaster on him for asking.

Or maybe she would - is she the kind of person who would pull a blaster on someone for digging into her past? Luke knows precious little about her. There’s always been something more pressing at the time than researching Alliance officers.

But there will always be something more pressing at the time. If he doesn’t talk to her now, when will he ever see her again? “Do you know where I can find her?” he asks, looking up at Hobbie.

“I know she just got back from a training course,” he says. “I just saw her - that’s why I came to find you. It looked like she was talking to one of the inventory droids.”

Inventory. Alright. No time like the present. “Great. I’ll head over there now. Thanks, Hobbie,” he says, sincere this time.

He starts to get up from the table, cold tray in hand, and turns to leave, when Hobbie shoots out an arm, grabbing him roughly by the shoulder of his jacket. “Wait - you should know,” he says, “I wasn’t on Chopper Base for too long, so I don’t know for sure, but I heard that General Syndulla and one of the Jedi… I heard that they were. You know.” He gestures with an elbow, absolutely devoid of any meaning that Luke can understand. At his blank stare, Hobbie does it again. “Pretty close.”

Sure. Luke resists the urge to roll his eyes. He’s learned to take most gossip on base with a massive heaping pile of salt, especially when it comes to romantic liaisons, and _especially_ when it comes to the alleged romantic liaisons of Alliance offers - most of it is just the overexcited grunts with too much time on their hands, trying to inject some intrigue into their tedious day-to-day routines, and when it comes to the women of the Alliance, people could get downright nasty. Still. “I’ll be careful,” he promises. “Thanks.”

* * *

 

It’s only as he is standing in the entrance to the inventory hangar that Luke realizes he’s never actually spoken to General Syndulla before. All of the other top brass of the Rebellion had descended on him the moment he’d touched down on Yavin IV, a whirlwind of shaking hands, heartfelt thanks, and predatory eyes. But not Syndulla. At first, he’d been relieved, then vaguely nervous that she was avoiding him, but apparently it was through no fault of his own - she had, he’d found out, been recently put on medical leave. By the time she returned to active duty, he’d already been dragged halfway across the galaxy by Leia.

“Thanks, Aypee.” Luke hears them before he sees them, the mechanical clomping of the droid and the soft shuffle of her boots echoing off the walls as they round the corner of some grav-crates. Apparently never one to rest, she wears her flight suit, its orange dull with dirt and time, goggles perched neatly over her head, flight cap snug around her lekku. “Let me know the minute we get below forty percent on proton bombs - we don’t want a repeat of last time.”

“General Syndulla?” Luke calls, catching her attention.

Coolly, without so much as a startle, she turns to greet him, face politely blank. “Skywalker. Good to see you back on base.”

“Thank you.”

“Need something requisitioned?”

Behind her, AP-5 almost perks up, as if it were even possible for the notoriously grouchy droid to have even the slightest hint of a positive emotion. Luke quickly shakes his head. “No, ma’am, I’m all set there.” The droid’s shoulders slump, somehow, despite the lack of shoulder joints, and he slouches off, a deep mechanical sigh escaping his mouth vent. “Actually, I was hoping to speak to you.”

She blinks, lekku swaying gently behind her. “About?”

“Well…” Of course, now that he’s got her where he wants her, he has no idea what to say to her. How do you even broach that topic, anyway? ‘Oh nothing, I just heard a rumor that you were harboring two known fugitives of the Empire on your ship.’ As if they all weren’t fugitives of the Empire. Will she laugh at him? Is this just another one of the base’s insane rumors? Will she even want to talk to him, if Hobbie was right?

Her wrist-chrono beeps, startling them both. Under her breath, she curses in a language he doesn’t understand. “I’m sorry, Skywalker, I have to go and meet someone. Can this wait?”

“Not really,” Luke says, weak smile pulling across his face. “I know you must be very busy, but I don’t know how long I’ll be around - Leia’s got us running ragged, and - “

“I understand,” she says. “Walk with me?”

Grateful, he ducks his head. “Thank you.”

“So,” she says as they head down the empty hallway. Her stride is longer than he would have thought; he nearly has to trot to keep pace with her. “What’s this all about?”

“Well,” he starts again, no closer to an introduction than he had been a few minutes ago. “Well, when I’m not on mission with Leia - or even when I am, if I can scrape some time together - I’ve been trying to look for information about - “ and he finds himself doing the same strange, non-committal non-gesture that Hobbie had done to him earlier. “About the Jedi.”

She nods, but says nothing.

“And,” he continues after a long moment, “I was asking around the base.” It’s one of those strange feelings he sometimes has, a knowing in his core that wards him off the wrong path, so he decides to follow it, rather than out Hobbie as the one who sent him to her. “And I was told that… that you’ve met Jedi before?”

Her lekku, relaxed, flowing, suddenly stiffen. Luke shivers beneath his jacket, despite the stillness of the stale air. “I have,” she says, low voice betraying nothing at all.

They walk another minute in silence.

“I was very young,” she says, eventually, “during the Clone Wars. My father was heavily involved in the fighting against the droid army - I guess you could say that insurrectionist action runs in my family,” and she flashes a tight, grimacing grin at him. “During the occupation, several Jedi were dispatched to assist him in breaking the Separatist hold on Ryloth.”

When she doesn’t elaborate, he presses, “And?”

“I only met one of them, Mace Windu, and only very briefly. I don’t know if that name means anything to you, but from what I can remember, he was a very important Jedi Master.” She keeps her eyes trained ahead of her, staring fixedly at the end of the hallway.

Luke can’t contain himself any further. “Is it true?” he asks, all of twelve years old again, endlessly curious, unable to hold his tongue. “Is it true that you had two Jedi on your crew?”

Something in her face creases, for just a second, and she stops dead in her tracks. Her eyes close, her arms coming up to fold over her chest. “Yes. I did.”

And all of a sudden, he is very glad that the hallway is empty. He turns away, one hand coming up to rub at the back of his head.

After what could very well have been a lifetime, she clears her throat. Looking back to her, she is dry-eyed, composed. She starts to walk again, more slowly. “What were their names?” he asks her, walking shoulder to shoulder. “If you don’t mind.”

“Kanan Jarrus. Ezra Bridger. Spectres-One and Six.” She breathes in through her nose, out through her mouth, once, twice.

This was a mistake. “General, I’m so sorry, if you don’t - “

She shakes her head, lekku swinging. Her left hand creeps higher, fingers clutching at empty air over her right shoulder, the scrape of fabric on fabric deafening in the quiet around them. “It’s alright.”

It’s another few silent minutes until they reach her office. Inside, there’s a desk, a chair, a large terminal, some assorted crates, and little else - sparse, unlived in. Dust mites float through the weak light like stars, systems in orbit.

“Kanan Jarrus,” she begins, leaning against her bare desk. Luke lingers at the threshold, again, one hand curled about the metal doorframe. “I met him eleven years ago, on this little planet called Gorse.” Luke’s never heard of it - not that that means much. “I was…” she trails off, then laughs, short but not happy. “I was doing some very early bothering of the Empire. I got into a bit of a,” she shrugs, “situation, and Kanan happened to be there to get me out. Back then, he was a freighter pilot, a drifter.” She smiles, then, small but sincere. Fond. Joyful, even. “A shameless flirt. But I know, I could tell immediately there was something different about him.” Finally, she looks at him, green eyes trapping his own with their intensity, compelling him to listen. “Kanan had been a padawan-learner, in the last few months of the Clone Wars. When the clones turned on him and his master, he managed to escape them. He changed his name, made a new life for himself, and left his life as a Jedi behind.”

Luke’s mind races. A Jedi survivor. A Clone War veteran. He’d been right in the thick of it. “Padawan?” he asks, the unfamiliar word awkward in his mouth.

“Like an apprentice,” Syndulla says. “Somehow, I managed to convince him to join my cause, small as it was. Over the years, we recruited some more crew members, did odd jobs wherever we could get work: some thieving here, a little smuggling there - anything we could do to take on the Empire and walk away with a victory.”

The room, grey and dusty, shifts, ever so slightly - soft and diffused where it was once cool and empty. Luke moves to sit on one of the crates, ignoring the way the metal presses up into his bones.

“Five years ago, we were running an op out of Lothal, and out of nowhere, this random kid hijacked a speeder, nabbed one of our crates, and just took off, dodging Imperials like he’d been doing it for years. That was Ezra,” she says, another fond smile gracing her face. “His parents had been taken - arrested for anti-Imperial radio broadcasts when he was younger - so he’d been living on his own for a while.” Homeless, Luke translates. Living on the streets. He’d seen it all the time on Tatooine, former Hutt slaves turned out, left to die in the desert suns. No help was ever offered on behalf of the Empire. “But Kanan saw something special in him. So, after Ezra helped us finish up the op, Kanan asked him to stay on, to let him teach him about the Force.”

“What happened to them?” Luke blurts, the question itching at the back of his mouth. “If I may.”

Joy disappears, sucked out, like a depressurized airlock. “Kanan died,” she says, voice clear and steady, eyes downcast. The hand resting on her shoulder twitches, grasps at nothing. “He died a year ago, during a rescue op.”

A wave of sadness - a sadness that, somehow, isn’t his own - passes over him, buffeting him like a sandstorm.

“And Ezra…” she sighs, blowing out a heavy breath. “Truth be told, I don’t know what happened to him.”

Luke frowns. “What do you mean?”

“It was his plan - this crazy, incredible plan - to get rid of all the Imperials on Lothal. We’d summon them back to their base, the dome in Lothal’s capital, and once we had them all, we’d launch the thing sky high, blowing it all to hell.” The venom in her voice takes him aback - he’d heard General Syndulla was intense, but this is rageful. Bloodthirsty. “We had the dome under lockdown, we had the codes, we had everything under control. But Thrawn,” she shakes her head, scowling, “Grand Admiral Thrawn, he commanded the Imperial Seventh Fleet - he was just too damn clever. Too damn smart. He outmaneuvered us at every turn, so Ezra went to their flagship to negotiate surrender.” Her teeth click shut, jaw working, and that tide of unknown grief crashes over him again.

“And then?” His heart races.

Her sorrow slowly disappears from her face, easing the lines around her mouth. “What he didn’t tell us, of course, was that he was buying as much time as he could for some friends of his to show up.”

“Who?”

Syndulla laughs. “Would you believe me if I said a pod of Purrgil?”

He gapes at her. Maybe his eyes pop out of his head. “Purrgil.”

“I know.”

“ _Purrgil_.”

“I know! I couldn’t believe it myself,” she says, grinning. “But Ezra always had a way with animals. Somehow, he called them to Lothal, and somehow, they took the Seventh Fleet.”

“They… took the fleet?”

“And Thrawn with it. The whole fleet, gone!” She waves a gloved hand. “Launched into hyperspace.”

A momentary flash of insight, of intuition. “Ezra was still on board?”

She nods. The smile falls from her face. “We never saw him again.”

“Where…” he licks his lips, gathering his thoughts, attempting to piece together the threads of this incredible story. “Where did they go?”

“Far enough away to take Thrawn out of the war effort, for good. And far enough away that he may never be able to come home. Provided he even survived the jump.”

He swallows around the lump in his throat. Another link in the chain, gone. Two Jedi, gone. And for Syndulla - two good men. Two friends. Two members of her family.

“I’m sorry, Skywalker,” she says, kindly. “I wish I could give you something, anything. Kanan used to have a holocron, with maps, recordings, training modules - he used it to teach Ezra - but it was destroyed a long time ago.”

Luke nods. He should have known that this would turn out to be a wild bantha chase from the very beginning. “It’s okay. Thank you for your time.”

Now it’s his turn to close his eyes against the sudden flow of emotion. Two more people who had given their lives for the cause, like Rogue One, like Ben - like his father - now lost to the ages with nothing but secondhand memories and unanswered questions to pass on - something hot curls up from the very bottom of his spine, worming its way through him, putrid, angry. It’s her anger, something tells him, her grief and her rage, overwhelming him, consuming him.

They should be here. They should all be here. They deserve to see the things they started through to the end, and they never will.

A knock on the wall startles him out of his spiral, and he jumps to his feet, hand grasping around his hip - he hadn’t even heard anyone approaching. At the doorway is another Twi’lek, older, colored a pale tan, dressed in fatigues and supporting a cloth bundle in one arm. “Pardon the intrusion,” he says, thickly accented, with flashes of sharp teeth. He goes to wrap Syndulla up in a one-armed embrace, and she meets him halfway, without hesitation.

“It’s so good to see you,” she murmurs, that same accent coloring her voice ever so slightly, and squeezes tight, before pulling back.

Luke, calculating the awkward squeeze he’d have to make around them in order to sneak out the door without being noticed, nearly misses Syndulla’s hand coming down on his shoulder, firm, insistent. Looks like he’s not going anywhere. Not that he would have made it around them in the first place. “Skywalker, allow me to introduce General Cham Syndulla, leader of the Free Ryloth movement. Father,” she says, and Luke just barely manages to keep a tight lid on his shock at _that_ tidbit of information, “this is Commander Luke Skywalker - the pilot who shot the Death Star.”

Cham’s eyes light up at that, grasping Luke’s hand with his free one in a grip as equally firm as his daughter’s. “It is a very great honor, Commander,” he says, another equally intense gaze boring into him. “On behalf of all worlds, I thank you for ridding the galaxy of such an evil weapon.”

What does one even say to that? ‘You’re welcome’? ‘It was nothing’? “It was my pleasure,” he honestly replies, and Cham laughs, full-bellied.

“I am certain it was!”

“And this,” says Syndulla, taking the bundle from her father, drawing back the cloth to reveal - “is Jacen - my son.”

If Luke’s jaw isn’t resting on the floor, he’d be shocked. A son? General Syndulla has a son?

Jacen, at first glance, looks nothing like his mother - and at second and third glances as well. He’s tan, small, and, frankly, squishy, like a human baby would be, with blue eyes, and a full head of green hair. (Dyed? He’s never seen a human with naturally green hair before.) There’s not a single hint of a lek anywhere on him, nor any other traditional Twi’leki features. It’s only on the fourth glance that he can see, on the tips of his ears and in the freckles around his nose, hints of Syndulla’s green skin.

Does Hobbie know?

Jacen turns his head as best he can to look at Luke, large eyes locked onto his.

“Commander Skywalker here is interested in learning more about the old Jedi Order,” Syndulla is saying to her father, far away. “I’ve told him what I know - perhaps you have some more information for him?”

Jacen smiles at him, and Luke sees - something. Maybe. Fire. A field of stars. The wolf. It passes like a heartbeat, like lightspeed. He blinks dust out of his eyes.

“Skywalker, eh?” says Cham, stroking his chin. “I thought I had recognized the name. Commander, I do believe I have fought with a relative of yours.”

Mind somewhere else, Luke blinks at him, mouth working on its own. “My father?

“Anakin Skywalker, yes?” Luke nods. “I did, though I regret, not as well as I would have wished. He was a masterful pilot, a keen and cunning tactician, though he was largely engaged in the aerial arena. There we were,” he intones, a hand moving to set the stage, and Syndulla, fondly, rolls her eyes. “General Windu, myself, my warriors, the clones, the _civilians_ \- trapped, by Wat Tambor and his droid army. We had successfully stormed the bridge, the capital was in our grasp! Were it not for the impending bombing run, we would have won the day!” In a fit of inspiration, he gently takes Jacen from Syndulla’s arms, holding him aloft. Jacen smiles wide, clearly knowing exactly what is coming, and he spreads his short arms as wide as he possibly can. “And just at the moment we lost all hope, who should arrive, but General Anakin Skywalker! Leading the A-Wing charge to our aid!” He flies Jacen about the room, happy laughs and gurgles instead of blaster fire echoing in the space, Syndulla laughing right alongside him. Even Luke can’t resist as Jacen flaps his arms, apparently trying to fly on his own. “Oh, truly,” Cham says, returning Jacen to the crook of his arms, “that day, we would have been lost without your father.”

“Thank you.” It feels like the right thing to say. And it feels - well, it feels good. To know his father really was a hero.

“Are you coming, Hera?” Cham asks.

Luke turns to find Hera rummaging through her desk drawer, and she waves him on. “I’ll be right behind you.”

Cham grasps his hand again, another firm shake. “It was a pleasure to meet you, Commander.” Jacen coos in agreement.

“Likewise, General.”

“If I can recover my old reports on the Battle of Lessu, I’ll have them sent over to my daughter, so that you may peruse them as you wish.”

“That would be - “ Luke coughs around the sudden block in his throat, blinks away his strangely hazy vision. “That would be… incredible. Thank you.”

“May our paths cross once more,” Cham says, and Jacen waves a chubby hand at him from Cham’s arms as they round the corner.

“Here we go,” says Syndulla from behind him, and he turns to see her pulling an ancient data stick from the equally ancient terminal. “These probably don’t have what you’re looking for, but I want you to have them anyway.” She places the clunky, boxy stick in his hand, curling his fingers around it, like a talisman, a holy relic. It’s heavier than it looks.  “These are all the Rebellion’s files on Kanan and Ezra. They’re not much, but they should give you some sense of who they were.”

Luke goes to pull away, but she holds his hand tightly, frowning. “General?”

“Your father was a Jedi.” It’s not a question, but he nods all the same. “What about you? Are you a Jedi, Luke?” she asks.

“I…” He swallows, mouth dry. “I don’t think so. Not yet.” 

She nods, mouth twisting. She stares him down, appraising, assessing - does she find Luke lacking? “Kanan always said,” she continues, after a moment, “that the legacy of the Jedi was failure. If you’re going to keep on this path, if you’re going to keep searching for these answers, then you need to know that.”

 _But that’s not true!_ He nearly blurts - what about his father? What about Ben Kenobi? What about all the wonderful things she's seen them do? But then, he thinks, she's the one who's still standing. She would know better, wouldn’t she?

“Kanan and Ezra, the Jedi - they could do incredible things, win impossible battles. But they lost the Clone Wars. And then they lost everything. Is that really something you want to be a part of?” She presses his hand. “Just think about it.”

And then releasing him, she touches his shoulder one last time, as she leaves to follow her family.

**Author's Note:**

> vomits love all over
> 
> a million bajillion thanks to ArizonaPoppy/The-Porg-Apprentice/Eschscholzia/the most magnificent of creatures for the wonderful beta!!!


End file.
